"And it ne'er will be cured by doctor on earth, Tho' every one should tent him, oh! He shall tremble and die like the elf-shot eye, And return from whence he came, oh!"
There is, however, a remedy, though not easy of attainment--"It lies in the wearing a sark, thus prepared:--The lint must be grown in a field which shall be manured from a farmyard heap that has not been disturbed for forty years. It must be spun by Habbitrot, the queen of spinsters; it must be bleached by an honest bleacher, in an honest miller's mill-dam, and sewed by an honest tailor. On donning this mysterious vestment, the sufferer will at once regain his health and strength." Unfortunately the necessary conditions for the successful accomplishment of this charm are so difficult, that he must be a clever man who can fulfil them. In the South of England, on the other hand, we do not find the same dread attaching to the graves of still-born children. Thus on a certain occasion, when one of the Commissioners of Devonport complained that a charge of one shilling and sixpence should have been made upon the parish authorities for the grave and interment of a still-born child, he added that "when he was a young man it was thought lucky to have a still-born child put into an open grave, as it was considered to be a sure passport to heaven for the next person buried there." According to another superstitious notion, if a mother frets and pines after her baby when it is dead, it is said that it cannot rest, and will come back to earth again. Various stories are on record of children thus visiting their mothers after death, an instance of which we quote from the "Dialect of Leeds:"--It appears that soon after the birth of the mother's next child, the previous one that had died entered her room with eyes deeply sunken, as if with much weeping, and on approaching the bed, said, "Mother, I can't rest if you will go on fretting." She replied, "Well, lad, I wean't fret any more." He then looked upon the bed and said, "Let's luke at it, mother!" She turned down the coverlet and let him look at her new-born babe. "It'll die," he said, and vanished. These, then, are some of the boundless dangers and difficulties that are supposed to beset the beginnings of life; and, taking into consideration the importance of that momentous crisis, when a fresh actor is introduced upon the world's great stage, it is not surprising that this event has, in most ages and countries, been associated with divers superstitions, and given rise to sundry customs, each of which has helped to invest man's entry into this world with all that grandeur which such a solemn occasion requires.